Few evil entities can beat the unholy trifecta of clowns, dolls, and nuns — and we look at some of the most insidious and iconic in horror.
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What’s supposed to be fun or kind but turns out to be terrifying? Clowns, dolls, and nuns, of course! Hiding behind a playful or holy façade, we have horrors lurking on this list of circus stalkers, sentient dolls, and cursed nuns. From It to Valak, I’ve tried to find the standouts of the not-so-scary things that end up being frightening.
Phobias are one thing; I personally always found clowns odd, porcelain dolls creepy, and ventriloquist dummies insufferable. But these movies find clever, comedic, or killer ways to turn once-safe or proud figures into monsters.
Find your favorite stuffed animal, put on your clown shoes, and say a prayer; these were the most prominent clowns, dolls, and nuns the genre has offered us in the past several decades.
If I missed someone special, feel free to comment if your most memorable viewing experience was with these tricky toys, or give us your harshest anecdotes from Catholic school.
Clowns
It (Pennywise)
Pennywise the Clown was brought to life in Stephen King’s 1986 smash hit novel “It”, an alternative moniker for this timeless, ancient, morphing entity that feeds not only fear but itself approximately every 30 years.
Played by Tim Curry in the 1990 television movie version of King’s work, and decades later in 2017 and 2019 in the sequel, envisioned with Bill Skarsgard donning the signature clown costume, balloons in hand. Pennywise, while not a clown per se, chooses this form to persuade children to get closer. They’ll flee if they’re frightened, and adults are much harder to seduce, making this choice of a children’s birthday performer a perfect one for a predatory being.
With a goofy voice and a vicious tendency for manipulation, Pennywise and his arsenal of shapeshifting choices make him a terrible foe to face. However, I can name fewer more famous clowns that have created such a body count than he has in the centuries this beast has been rising, terrorizing, and feasting on those too naïve to know a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Terrifier (Art the Clown)
Both this film’s titular villain and its director personally strangled me for a photo opportunity this year in a beautiful personal tribute to this next vicious clown (see photographic evidence below).
New to the scene as far as clowns go, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) made a splash, small at first in All Hallows Eve, but growing exponentially larger with every new movie Damien Leone concocts for our supernaturally sunny serial killer.
The Terrifier series, expecting its third Christmas-based installment in October of 2024, promises a whole new mess of splatter and a new holiday for Art to paint red. The films that called for vomit bags and caused many a theater walkout are well known for their successful use of over-the-top practical effects to create the bloodiest scenes in modern horror.
I’d have to say if you’re a modern horror fan and don’t know who Art the Clown is… test your stomach and have a watch.
Maybe more like a mime than a clown as Art doesn’t speak, or make any sounds for that matter, I still count him as one of the most disturbing, memorable, and deadly circus freaks out there currently — and with Leone at the helm, I expect more clown shooed, tip toeing, trash bag toting, gore shenanigans than I can handle.
Clown
The 2014 supernatural thriller Clown was directed by John Watts in his directorial debut with production backing from the splatter master himself, Eli Roth.
The story goes that Kent McCoy had a normal life before his young son’s birthday party. When the performer they hire cancels the event, Kent finds an old clown costume in the basement and decides to put on a show himself. Exhausted, Kent sleeps in the suit and awakes to find it won’t come off, even having to attend work and finding slowly that trying to remove the costume harms him. With the wig becoming his hair and an insatiable appetite in him growing, Kent needs to find a way to sever himself from the suit before it’s too late.
Overall, labeled as a middling disappointment, I thought Clown and its ideas about possession and metamorphosis were interesting and shook up the killer circus angle quite a bit. But according to other sources, even the best practical effects and makeup can’t dress this movie up enough for an encore, but maybe you should still score a first viewing to decide.
Killer Klowns From Outer Space
Considered a cult classic, the 1988 sci-fi horror comedy Killer Klowns From Outer Space touched down on earth with a silly and scary message.
One night, near the town of Crescent Cove, several people spotted a large, bright, flying object plummeting to earth. A farmer goes to the crash site to investigate but is greeted with a circus tent instead of a meteor and is shortly taken hostage by the alien, clown-costumed friends that call themselves “clowns.” With tricks like turning an audience into miniatures during a shadow puppet show or bringing a balloon dog to life, it’s hard not to admire the level of creativity put into the creation of what sounds like a supremely silly movie.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space. The title alone screams 80’s popcorn movie, but with such surprisingly high ratings, you might surprise yourself if you choose to watch this genre mash-up generating otherworldly clown creatures.
Clowns? Aliens? I’m going by the costume. They may not be from Earth, but they sure can rock a red nose.
Hell House LLC Series
The 2015 found footage gem Hell House LLC from Stephen Cognetti was a surprise hit with tons of scares and shockers.
The story follows five young haunted house creators looking to begin their next venture by repurposing the infamous Abaddon Hotel in upstate New York. When the team arrives, spirits are high, but soon, spirits of a different kind seem to be running rampant in the hotel, reaching a climax on opening night and creating a mystery to keep the public wondering for years.
It’s three guests that are in the hotel on arrival that take this spot on the list: the clowns of Hell House LLC. Ugly, creepy, dirty, and abandoned, the circus freaks are found in the basement of the hotel with no real explanation for their appearance. Soon, the clowns begin to make their presence known, supposedly unable to move not even so much as to turn their heads, the mannequins begin to move around without explanation, heads turning and stalking to the crew day and night.
With these demonic-looking ghouls present in every single Hell House film up through this year, Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor, they are a fixture in this franchise and take a top spot as some of the scariest and most deceptive members of the house with arguably the most unnerving presentation.
Stitches
A revenge story for the underdog, Stitches, directed by Conor McMahon and released in 2012, is a tragic, horrifying, and sometimes comedic tale of the hardest parts of being a clown.
Richard Grindle or “Stitches”, his stage name, is preparing for a boy’s birthday party. Instead of laughing with him, the children ridicule the man, pulling a cruel prank that ultimately leads to his grisly death. It’s later discovered that there’s a way to resurrect Stitches, as a group of clowns uses a painted egg to complete a ritual allowing Stitches to return from the grave… and a joke is never as funny the second time. Now given a new life and a chance at revenge, Stitches rises on the boy’s 16th birthday, prepared to celebrate the end of their lives.
A work that received below-average reviews, Stitches doesn’t pretend to be anything that it’s not: a classic B-movie with an undead, vengeful clown.
Haunt
While not everyone was wearing a clown mask, this movie put the fear of god in me when I realized the masks were what was hiding the true horror.
Haunt is the classic tale of a rustic, undiscovered haunted attraction that lures in a group of youngsters. Giving up their phones and entering an abandoned, tricked-out haunted house, this party is about to get gruesome when the scares start to feel anything but fake. The horror behind the clowns is the way these people chose to display themselves and how they altered themselves for presentation. Body modification, skinning, tattooing, piercing, cutting, searing, scarring, and burning are all, from the looks of it, a part of the antagonists’ game.
One of them has clearly sliced the tip off his nose, creating a permanent clown-like appearance with the bloody exposed tip. That’s commitment.
Dolls
M3GAN (Megan)
The 2022 sci-fi horror film from Gerard Johnstone was a personal disappointment for me, but with all the buzz and the timeliness of her appearance, I decided to let Megan on this list.
Grossing massive box office numbers on its meager budget and earning itself a sequel, M3GAN was a hit with audiences and critics alike, with stars Allison Williams (Get Out) and Violet McGraw (The Haunting of Hill House) starring as creator and caregiver, respectively, for Megan. Eight-year-old Cady’s parents are killed in a car crash suddenly, and she is sent to live with her young, tech-savvy aunt, Gemma. Secretly using her company’s resources to create the ideal companion by marrying a humanoid robot with AI capability, Gemma believes Megan could be the next big development.
A prototype is paired with Cady, convincing the company that the bot could have earning potential. But as time passes, people begin to wonder about Cady’s quickly forming unhealthy attachment to Megan. Exceeding expected directives and assuming a caretaker role, Megan soon becomes equally protective of Cady and begins targeting perceived threats.
Not quite a toy, not quite a person, but with all the cunning and ruthlessness of someone made of flesh and blood, Megan is a toy you prefer to be on the good side of.
Child’s Play (Chucky)
What kind of list would this be if Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif and later Mark Hamill) wasn’t here? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: he’s your friend til’ the end.
Child’s Play was released in 1988, and with eight films, including a reboot and a television series released, it seems no one is tired of playing with Chucky just yet. The horror comedy franchise found its villain in Charles Lee Ray, a serial killer on the run from the law. After being chased into a toy store, a shootout turns deadly. With his last breaths, Ray utters a voodoo chant to transfer his soul into one of the Good Guy dolls on the shelves next to him.
Later, struggling widow Karen is trying to obtain a Good Guy doll for her son’s birthday. Finding them too expensive, she fetches a discounted model from a homeless peddler and gives it to her son, who is enthralled. The first night, the doll refers to itself as “Chucky,” and Andy’s babysitter for the evening takes a fatal fall due to the doll’s attack. Already causing trouble, Charles Lee Ray is hiding in plain sight, and no one believes it.
An absolute classic, you’d be a fool to think this famous doll could go unnoticed on the top horror toys… but he’s no Good Guy.
The Boy (Brahms)
The Boy, directed by William Brent Bell and written by Stacey Menear, debuted in 2016 with Walking Dead star Lauren Cohan leading.
Running from a troubled past, Cohen plays Greta Evans, an American who’s moved to England for a nannying position. While everything seems a bit tense and somewhat odd on her arrival, it’s the child she’s watching that’s the most peculiar. Greta won’t be nannying your average little boy; Brahms is a porcelain doll that the Heelshire family tends to like their own son. Supposedly, their son died in a fire, and the doll showed up shortly after, with the couple having tended to him ever since.
This in and of itself is alarming enough — to be left in an enormous house to tend to a doll, with the only visitor being the grocery boy. But what happens when Greta tries to settle in is what really begins to disturb her. Brahms has a very strict set of rules that his family now relies on Greta to complete for them. But as Greta doesn’t believe in the doll, it seems Brahms is reaching out from somewhere to remind her of her duties, making this doll just as lifelike as the hosts seemed to imply.
Tending deeply to the doll and slowly losing her sanity in the isolation of the country, Brahms is Greta’s baby now, a doll with horrible secrets, a horrible burden, and a horrible motive to have someone there to love him for good.
Dead Silence
Beware the stare of Mary Shaw; she had no children, only dolls.
Most of us are familiar with the nursery rhyme created for the 2007 James Wan and Leigh Whannell joint, Dead Silence.
I was terrified of my Goosebumps copy of “Night of the Living Dummy” so much that my parents had to make sure the cover was never showing; that’s how intense my phobia of ventriloquist dummies is. Couple that with meeting the lovely, kind, and amazingly energetic Judith Roberts this year, who plays the titular villain, and I’m completely conflicted from the paralyzing fear and the admiration I have for those who put this strange, generally poorly rated film that had me covering my mouth.
Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife receive an anonymous package delivered to them containing a ventriloquist dummy named “Billy”. When Jamie leaves, his wife is murdered horrendously with no other culprit but the doll in sight. Initially thought to be the killer, Jamie is released, burying the doll under advisement after he finds a mysterious note in the box referencing Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts), a deceased performer from his hometown of Raven’s Fair.
With the police trailing him and the frail town warning him to stay away from the legend, Jamie sets out for answers to his wife’s murder and faces off with a vengeful spirit whose appearance could certainly elicit a scream.
With an all-star director, writer, and cast, I’m shocked this movie didn’t perform better, but I’ll always visit Judith Roberts at conventions. Her smile is much warmer than what Mary Shaw would have you think, and thank god she didn’t have Billy.
Annabelle
First introduced in 2013 in the infamous introduction to The Conjuring, Annabelle is no plaything despite her childlike, albeit disturbing, façade.
Annabelle’s first feature film, named after her by director John R. Leonietti, came in 2014 as a prequel to The Conjuring, explaining the origin of the doll and its factor of being a conduit for spiritual and demonic possession and its penchant for manipulative behavior. One of the most dangerous items the Warrens possess, she was sealed in their museum of terrors behind church glass.
Two films followed: Annabelle Creation and Annabelle Comes Home, both of which outperformed the original and constructed a more concrete world for the doll, showing it to be a beacon to other spirits and even bringing back the Warrens for the most recent film for the first reintroduction of the original cast of The Conjuring in any of the branches of the universe.
A well-known icon from Wan’s universe, Annabelle is now an iconic doll that hides many secrets — namely, who or what controls her.
Nuns
The Nun (Valak)
The most well-known nun presently, the demon Valak, has been sowing evil for centuries.
Its power and sinister religious presentation as a nun, presumed to be a mockery of God’s servants, makes this hollow-faced ghoul a frightening one. The first Nun film came out in 2018 from director Corin Hardy and writer Gary Dauberman, who adapted the script from a story written by Dauberman and James Wan. The “spiritual spin-off” to The Conjuring 2, this is another branch in Wan’s universe inching further away from god.
The story follows Sister Irene in the mid-50s, having visions of a wicked nun, which earns her and a fellow priest a trip to an abbey in Romania that has been plagued with misfortune and evil.
While the first film didn’t necessarily wow audiences, its sequel that debuted this year fared far better with the return of the ashen-eyed demon nun hiding anything but holy under its clothes.
Veronica & Sister Death (Hermana Muerte)
The 2017 Spanish supernatural horror film Veronica, directed by Paco Plaza, was a critical hit and an audience miss when it first arrived.
Telling the tale of a fifteen-year-old girl living with her widowed mother and three siblings in Madrid, the story is familiar enough. On the day of a solar eclipse, one of Veronica’s teachers explains that during this time ancient cultures staged sacrifices and attempted to summon spirits. Inspiring her, Veronica and her two friends, Rosa and Diana, get an Ouija board and attempt to use it to contact Veronica’s deceased father and Diana’s late boyfriend.
When the glass they are using on the board becomes boiling hot, the other girls save Veronica and remove their hands, but at the apex of the eclipse, the glass shatters, getting Veronica’s blood on the board and sending her into a screaming trance. After this and other strange occurrences, she consults the school’s elderly nun, a woman called Hermana Muerte (Sister Death). She explains that an entity likely attached itself to Veronica but cannot seem to shake it.
Sister Death was a compelling character in Veronica, shrouded in mystery, blind but all-seeing.
Despite the lukewarm audience reception to Veronica, a second film debuted this year, a prequel titled Sister Death, revisiting the life of Hermana Muerte. Named Narcisa, she is supposedly a gifted and special girl who has inspired the religious community and is being welcomed into a convent. Her gifts, though powerful, still cause her to have visions and nightmares indicative of the past and future, leading to shocking revelations and the imbuing of Narcisa with new abilities.
I recommend you watch both films on Netflix in whichever order you prefer, because this nun, thought sightless, can stare right through you.
The Devils
A historical horror drama, the 1971 film The Devils was a controversial affair, gaining an X rating in both the United Kingdom and the United States in its time.
Following a priest and a nun, the story is a psychosexual bomb that had audiences clutching their pearls due to the portrayal of violence and intense sexuality so close to religion. It’s 17th-century France, and there is revolt in the air, but that’s not what we are focused on. In Loudun, the governor has died, and a popular priest, Urbain Grandier, has inherited his control. He is also having an affair with a relative of another man of the cloth, and unbeknownst to him, he is the sexual obsession of the disturbed, hunchbacked abbess of the local Ursuline convent, Sister Jeanne de Agnes.
Her anger and jealousy grow when she finds that he has secretly married. She is soon accused of sacrilege, fornication, and sin when books she lent to another nun are discovered and searched.
Leveraging faith against human desire while contrasting intense sexuality and violence with the church was a bold statement. The film itself retains critical acclaim despite the drama it generated and solidifies Sister Jeanne de Agnes as the secret admirer you pray never lays their eyes on you.
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